Products from oil (petroleum products) help us do many things. We use them to fuel our airplanes, cars, and trucks, to heat our homes, and to make products like medicines and plastics. Even though petroleum products make life easier, finding, producing, moving, and using them can cause problems for our environment, such as air and water pollution.

Exploring and drilling for oil may disturb land and ocean habitats. New technologies have greatly reduced the number and size of areas disturbed by drilling, sometimes called "footprints." Today's production footprints are only about one-fourth the size of those from thirty years ago, due to the development of movable drilling rigs and smaller "slimhole" drilling rigs.

When the oil in a well is gone, the well must be plugged below ground, making it hard to tell that it was ever there. As part of the "rig-to-reefs" program, some old offshore rigs are toppled and left on the seafloor to become artificial reefs that attract fish and other marine life. Within six months to a year after a rig is toppled, it becomes covered with barnacles, coral, sponges, clams, and other sea creatures.

If oil is spilled into rivers or oceans, it can harm wildlife. When we talk about "oil spills," people usually think about oil that leaks from ships when they crash. Although this type of spill can cause the biggest shock to wildlife because so much oil is released at one time, only 2 percent of all oil in the sea comes from ship or barge spills. More oil actually gets into water from natural oil seeping from the ocean floor, or from leaks that happen when we use petroleum products on land. Some examples of this are gasoline that sometimes drips onto the ground when people are filling their gas tanks, motor oil that gets thrown away after an oil change, or fuel that escapes from a leaky storage tank. When it rains, the spilled products get washed into the gutter and eventually go to rivers and the ocean. Another way that oil sometimes gets into water is when fuel is leaked from motorboats and jet skis.¹